"What we take from the earth, we put it back to the earth!"
», Enthuses Eric, a resident of the 13th arrondissement of Paris, as he throws peelings and other food scraps in a brown terminal in front of the Paris Anim 'René Goscinny Center, a few steps from the François Mitterrand Library.
This retiree has been participating since June in an experiment to collect and sort bio-waste, launched in a district of the 13th arrondissement of Paris.
The project, led by the compostable bag companies Sphere and the biowaste treatment company Les Alchimistes, aims to create compost from the remains of food thrown by residents in five specific terminals installed in the district. Like about 250 other families, Eric signed up to take part in the experiment. The volunteers received a roll of compostable bags, a “bio-bucket”, as well as a QR code or a small card which allows them to unlock one of the five terminals. "It's simple, I go down with the bio-waste that I put in a compostable bag, and I then throw it in this terminal", explains Eric.
Like him, Nathalie, mother of four children and already the owner of an earthworm composter at home, is convinced by the usefulness of the project.
“We totally joined the project, it's really easy to set up.
There is a very practical side, we come to the terminal and we drop our bag, it's really easy.
You still have to register to be recognized as a user, but after that, you are free to use the five terminals in the neighborhood, ”she explains.
For this young woman, these terminals also make it possible to compost foods that are generally not compatible with a vermicompost bin, such as bread, cheese or even chicken bones.
A one-year experiment
“It is obviously very practical for the people who live in this district, but it allows us to see very concretely on a district of the 13th arrondissement how things are going. The results are rather very good, moreover, because we can see that the sorting is well done and very regularly by all the people who wished to join is essential ”, rejoices the mayor of the 13th arrondissement, Jérôme Coumet. .
An experiment also deemed useful by John Persenda, CEO of the Sphere group, which provides compostable bags and which reminds us that the law will oblige the implementation of source sorting and the collection of all food waste "from 2024" . Two to three times a week, bio-waste is collected and then sent to one of the Alchimistes centers - located less than 10 km from Paris, says its president - where it is transformed into compost. This compost will then be redistributed to participants or sold in DIY stores and garden centers, say the Alchemists. "We want to put the organic matter used back where it should be, that is to say on the soil and the soil, it is one of the large stocks of organic carbon if we bring the soil back to life,"we participate in these two issues of biodiversity and (reduction of) global warming ”, underlines Alexandre Guilluy, co-founder and president of Les Alchimistes.
This experiment, which should affect “3,200” households, as Sphere et les Alchimistes explain, also concerns sectors of the 14th arrondissement of Paris and Ile-Saint-Denis, and should last until September 2022.
